Tech news tagged ‘design engineers’

Tiny educational computer Raspberry Pi is to be distributed by RS Components and Premier Farnell (aka element14).Premier Farnell’s CEO Harriet Green sees the start of something big:”At element14 we take very seriously the need to encourage more young people to take up technology and IT courses at…

USB chargers work by describing their capabilities with a "hardware handshake" of known resistor values across the data lines. If the data lines are disconnected, the charging rate will drop to 0.5 amps. useless for anything but a phone or Bluetooth headset.
BadUSB works by reprogramming a USB memory stick to enumerate itself to the host device as a keyboard. Once the keyboard driver is loaded, it starts sending keyboard commands hoping to find a command line or terminal session it can exploit.
The answer is simple, modify the USB keyboard drivers to simply ask the user "Use this USB keyboard? N/y" anybody with half a brain will realize that the power cable or memory stick is NOT a keyboard and hit enter or N and all will be well. One software change for each operating system. How often do you plug a new USB keyboard into a computer or device? Even Apple should not think this will strain the users good will to much.

There are many programs out there and many have 'laughable' limitations but are useful if the design is small.
I prefer the ease of Labcenter Lite (now obsolete), far better than their Pro version.... I would say a very big majority don't want the use of multi layer boards, a 2 layer board being ideal for many, I prefer a four layer board, the inner layers being used for text such as component numbering etc.... a great pity Labcenter doesn't cater for the enthusiast, there are many other brands that don't either.
It seems that Labcenter a very easy one to use is left out all the reviews I've come across and seldom mentioned.
Don't mention Design Spark by R.S Components - I find it clumsy, why would a home user want 3D viewing? It's actually a version of Easy PC designed to compete with Farnells Eagle PCB cad and free because it pushes RS components parts.
Hi time one or two got together and made a sensible program for the hobbyist rather throwing all these gimmicks and limitations.... no wonder Labcenter is seldom mentioned.